"Christianity is tough!"  This spoken by a friend of mine, a Jewish rabbi, during a conversation we had a few weeks ago.  We had been talking about grace.  In all of the many times we have talked, we almost always come to the same impasse:  for me, it is grace that compels and enables me to believe in God, whereas for my friend, it is the keeping of the law that leads him to believe in and, subsequently, love God.  On the one hand, favor before belief; on the other hand, favor after obedience.
     That's why my friend made this observation.  He could not understand how God could love people even before they believed in and obeyed him.  It is the law, he has always said, that helps him to love God.  Without the law, there is no reason to do so.
     This is what makes grace so complicated.  Very few of us like accepting things we do not deserve, particularly divine favor.  We would rather earn our way into acceptance.  Isn't that the way the world is?
     Indeed.  We live in a Darwinian world.  But what if it was the other way around?  What if we could learn to accept people, and God, before we know who they are or what they are all about?  What if we could learn to love without reservation or qualm?
     This is a bold agenda, yes, but perhaps it is the only one that will enable us to undo the moral morass into which we have fallen.  I talk not necessarily of sin, but of a mindset in which too many of we humans cannot believe anyone else can be human, too.
     Yes, Christianity is tough!